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Union of Soviet Socialist Republics of the Soviet Union (Atlantic Iron Curtain)
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics of the Soviet Union (Russian: Сою́з Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Респу́блик Советский Союз, tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik Sovetsky Soyuz) or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Russian: Сою́з Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Респу́блик, tr.'' Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik'') abbreviated to USSR (Russian: СССР, tr. SSSR) or the Soviet Union (Russian: Советский Союз, tr. Sovetsky Soyuz), is a constitutionally socialist state that has existed since its foundation in 1922, and is ruled as a single-party state by the Communist Party with Moscow as its capital and largest city. A union of fifteen subnational Soviet republics, its government and economy were highly centralized until World War II. The Soviet Union has its roots in the Russian Revolution of 1917, which deposed Tsar Nicholas II, ending three hundred years of Romanov dynasty dynastic rule. The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, then overthrew the provisional government. The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic was established and a civil war began. The Red Army entered several territories of the former Russian Empire and helped local communists seize power. In 1922, the Bolsheviks were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian and Byelorussian Soviet republics. Following Lenin's death in 1924, a troika collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism and initiated a centrally planned economy. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialisation and collectivisation which laid the basis for its later war effort and dominance after World War II. However, Stalin repressed both Communist Party members and elements of the population through his authoritarian rule. In 1940, during the Winter War, Marshal Georgy Zhukov overthrew Stalin in a coup d'état, and prepared USSR for war. During World War II, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, opening the largest and bloodiest theatre of war in history, and violating an earlier non-aggression pact between the two countries. The Soviet Union was better prepared for the invasion, but despite the preparations it suffered the largest loss of life in the war, but halted the Axis Powers advance at intense battles such at Stalingrad and Kursk, eventually driving through Eastern Europe. In 1946, Berlin and several other German major cities, as well as Milan, Italy were totally destroyed by Soviet nuclear weapons, developed during the wartime. After the defeat of Nazi Germany, Soviet Union turned to Spain, there the last Nazis had fled. It resulted in the Soviet-Spanish War, which ended with Soviet victory and the fall of Fascism in Europe, and the rise of the Soviet Union as one of the world's two recognized superpowers. Having played the sole decisive role in the Allied victory in Europe, the Soviet Union established the Eastern Bloc all over the European continent and had emerged as one of the world's two superpowers after the war. Together with the European satellite states, through which the Soviet Union established Comecon and the Berlin Pact, economic and military pacts, it became involved in the Cold War, a prolonged ideological and political struggle against the Western Bloc, led by the other superpower, the United States. The Soviet Union went then on to initiate significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including launching the first ever satellite and world's first human spaceflight, which led it into the Space Race. In 1968, Soviet Union became the first country in the world to put men on the Moon. In the 1970s and 1980s, a relaxation of relations followed. In 1991, the Pan-Islamic Federation put a man on the Moon, becoming the third country to do so, surprising both Soviet Union and the United States. In the 1990s, the two superpowers began a slow dismantling of most of their stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. In 2001, PIF-backed terrorists hijacked passenger jets and crashed them into the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, People's Republic of Germany and Austria, into the Winter Palace in Leningrad and into the Moscow Kremlin in Moscow in the September 11-attacks. After the September 11-attacks, the Soviet-Islamic War started when Berlin Pact forces, led by the Soviet Union invaded the Pan-Islamic Federation. After five years of intensive war, the Pan-Islamic Federation collapsed and was replaced by the Soviet-backed Tehran Pact.